Thursday, June 26, 2014

for later reading

if you love the VA Scandal, just look at the IHS. The President visited Standing Rock last week and promised that the Great Chief in Washington would help them. Yet this 2009 article suggests things are still as bad as when I worked in the Aberdeen area in 1980.

On some reservations, the oft-quoted refrain is "don't get sick after June," when the federal dollars run out. It's a sick joke, and a sad one, because it's sometimes true, especially on the poorest reservations where residents cannot afford health insurance. Officials say they have about half of what they need to operate, and patients know they must be dying or about to lose a limb to get serious care.

Wealthier tribes can supplement the federal health service budget with their own money. But poorer tribes, often those on the most remote reservations, far away from city hospitals, are stuck with grossly substandard care. The agency itself describes a "rationed health care system."

the "wealthier" tribes are those who cashed in on the Casino system and took over part or all of their clinics/hospitals.

so the fracking boom should let the tribes take over, but the "green" alliance with the "native American activists" (often those who grew up elsewhere and got educated into Marxism/green religion in college, not by attending sings or ceremonies) are opposing it because being rich will destroy the culture.

in this case, those living in traditional trailer parks are being forced to move (where did all that money go that the BIA was supposed to build decent housing for them?)

Still, the tribe is raking in cash. The Fort Berthold reservation received more than $117 million in royalties in 2011, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Individual tribal members who own mineral rights on their private land, or allotments, receive anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars a month. That’s about two-thirds of the tribe’s total royalties.

a similar activist inspired stories in the StarTrib.
no, it's probably good reporting but it follows the "meme" meaning I suspect that the stories were written before the investigation was done, or that the investigation was done to prove their pre determined ideas.